Join us on Sunday, September 8 for our 10am Fall Kick-Off service. This event is a celebration of the fall season getting underway with the return of the Calvary Chancel Choir, Special Music, the first Sunday back to KidsChurch, and a Fellowship Meal following the service.
Kids are invited to bring their school backpacks to the church service to receive a special blessing as they return to school. There will also be a time of recognition for the Calvary KidsChurch teachers and a blessing to thank them for their work and dedication to our students.
The service is at 10am. The Fellowship Meal will follow immediately in the Hall downstairs.
It is with sadness that we announce the passing of long-time Calvary member Dan Maxfield. Dan entered eternal glory on Sunday evening at home, surrounded by family. We give thanks that God blessed Dan with 90 years, and that he was able to celebrate this milestone birthday earlier this summer with friends and family.
We lift up Alice Maxfield and the entire Maxfield family in our prayers, that God would provide peace and comfort during these days, as well as the joy found in the promise of new life, and of the memories that they now hold close. Dan was a servant to his family, his country, his community through his vocation, and to his church, and we thank God for Dan’s example of faith and dedication.
A funeral service is scheduled for 11:00am at Calvary Lutheran Church on Saturday, August 24. A closed-casket viewing will take place before the service beginning at 9:30am in the Calvary Chapel. A repast luncheon will follow the funeral service in the Fellowship Hall. Interment to take place at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date.
This past Sunday, in response to the shootings in Dayton and El Paso, we took time at Calvary to hear from God’s Word on this issue, lament the senselessness of this violence, and pray for change in ourselves and our nation.
If this topic and our response to it was helpful to you, or if you believe this is a conversation we need to continue to have, I would extend a special invitation to be part of our Sunday morning Bible Study over the coming weeks. Last week we began a study on the Old Testament book of Lamentations. Ordinarily, this might be a book we would shy away from. Lamentations is exactly what the title says, poetry of lament, or sadness, and in the case of Lamentations, lament for the people and nation of Israel, upon the siege of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple in 586 B.C.
Lament is not a topic we ordinarily take up with zeal. We are attracted to topics that are joyful, uplifting, and easy to feel good about, but as Seminary Professor Soong-Chan Rah reminds us, in his commentary on Lamentations titled “Prophetic Lament” the failure to include Lament in our worship “results in the Loss of memory. We forget the necessity of Lamenting over suffering and pain. We forget the reality of suffering and pain.”
Dr. Rah describes lament in the Bible as “a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble. The hope of lament is that God would respond to human suffering that is wholeheartedly communicated through lament.”
Lament is not a habit many of us engage in easily. And, in good times, which Americans are privileged to experience as the normal way of life, lament is often a distant and even uncomfortable worship practice to take up. But for God’s people, it shouldn’t be. Lament is a historic and powerful force within the life of the church. The anxiety that many feel today, over events unfolding in the world, should be a reminder to reacquiant ourselves with this practice.
So, you are hereby invited to join the discussion. On Sundays at 8:45am we meet in the Fellowship Hall for Bible Study. For at least the next five weeks, the book of Lamentations will be our topic, and, I fully expect that current events, and the ways we respond to them as people of God, will be part of the conversation. If you are interested to learn more about this topic, you could also take a look at Soong-Chan Rah’s book “Prophetic Lament” which presents a practical view of Biblical lament, and its application in our lives.
